Word: rigs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...piercing sound that one survivor described as "screaming like a banshee" -- presumed to be a pressurized natural-gas leak -- screeched through the 650-ft.-high structure, whose four massive metal feet were anchored in the sea bottom 475 ft. below the surface. Seconds later an explosion ripped the rig in two, enveloping it in a ball of flame and smoke. Miraculously, 63 crew members survived, some with severe burns, the majority with only minor injuries. But 166 died, including two rescuers. It was the worst disaster in the 25-year history of North Sea oil exploration...
Those who survived had a nightmarish choice: to jump as far as 150 ft. down into a fiery sea or face certain death on the disintegrating rig, located 120 miles off the coast of Scotland. "It was just bloody horrific," said Derek Ellington, 45, a rigger. "Two-thirds of that platform melted with the heat and disappeared." Recalling the scene from a hospital in the Scottish city of Aberdeen, Andy Mochan, 48, a superintendent on the rig, said, "It was fry or jump, so I jumped...
Emergency precautions were of no use. There were lifeboats aboard the rig, but there was no time to use them. An emergency-support vessel, the Tharos, was permanently anchored nearby to help out in just such a catastrophe. It aimed its fire hoses at the Piper Alpha but was forced to turn away as the explosions continued. Twenty-eight ships, including a seven-unit NATO naval force led by the U.S. destroyer Hayler, quickly assembled to take part in a rescue mission, as did Royal Air Force reconnaissance planes and helicopters...
Occidental Petroleum, owner of the Piper Alpha platform, said it believed a gas leak was to blame, but days or weeks would be needed to determine what caused and ignited it. Occidental said the three-quarters of the 649-foot-high rig was destroyed...
...number of men still missing and the dim prospects for finding them alive seem certain to make the Piper Alpha explosion the worst oil rig disaster ever, surpassing the 123 deaths when the Alexander L. Kielland platform capsized in Norway's North Sea waters in March...